What the Online “Red Pill” Community Gets Wrong

The term red pill became popularised from the 1999 film The Matrix, where the main character is offered a choice between a red pill, representing an uncomfortable truth, and a blue pill, representing blissful ignorance.

The red pill movement, on the other hand, is a men’s activist movement that is a subsection of the manosphere (a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums that promote certain ideas about masculinity) that took this idea to showcase the uncomfortable truth that males are the “oppressed ones,” rather than females, in somewhat retaliation to women’s rights and feminist groups.

This genuinely started off on the right foot, discussing and debunking a lot of myths about gender inequality (pay gaps, domestic abuse, lack of representation in leadership, “the patriarchy,” etc.) and opening the conversations about the struggles that males face more than females (mental health, domestic violence and harassment, suicide rates, custody issues, homelessness, longer prison sentences, divorce settlements) that is well presented in the documentary “The Red Pill”, which premiered on October 7, 2016.

This opened the online space for multiple personalities to ride the wave. Re-emphasising the key topics and ideas discussed in the documentary and then providing some guidance to males, specifically on what they should focus on to become a "high-value man" to attract females and not be lonely. This was done through typical self-development preachings, like learning new skills, going to the gym, eating cleaner, making more money, and hanging out with motivated people.

They also would provide basic, not always accurate, insights into masculine and feminine relationship dynamics, what should and shouldn’t be “tolerated,” showcasing that when this traditional dynamic is flipped, there is a higher likelihood of males being cheated on or divorced.

However, certain influencers became a little out of control trying to impress their communities. This usually happens when the individuals who create these online communities don’t necessarily have an appropriate understanding of the complexity and scope of the whole issue and only see it from their narrow lens, and ironically start to become like the feminist and women’s activist groups that they originally criticised to get popular, showcasing their inability to take the red pill to its true extent.

Some of these communities started promoting ideas like encouraging young males to focus solely on making money and improving their physical appearance. They even advocate for extreme measures like getting a vasectomy in their early 20s and pursuing superficial goals such as sleeping with at least 50 females before settling down. This, they argue, is a strategy to avoid being “finessed” in relationships. Much of this advice is positioned as a countermeasure to modern females, who they claim no longer value family as much as previous generations. But frankly, this mindset is misguided and shortsighted.

While they’re not entirely wrong in pointing out that wealth and physical appearance can attract females, the type of females these traits appeal to are often the very ones they criticize. The “traditional females” with low or no body counts that they want to attract value entirely different qualities.

Encouraging self-improvement is undoubtedly a positive goal, but the qualities being emphasized in these circles are misguided. The attraction isn’t solely about the appearance of success; it’s about how those qualities function in the context of fatherhood, partnership, and building a meaningful life. If some females are drawn to superficial traits like wealth and looks, that doesn’t mean males should lower their standards or shape their goals solely around gaining their attention.

Moreover, having the qualities of a “good father” or being a high-value man doesn’t entitle anyone to act selfishly in relationships. Many of these communities promote the idea that males in the top percentile can demand open relationships on their end, expecting their partners to tolerate infidelity as part of the deal. This is not only immature but fundamentally incompatible with what truly good females value. It’s worth questioning the caliber of relationships these individuals actually have, given that most of them lack the stability or depth of a long-term partnership.

A relationship measured in years—10, 20, or even 30—is not as long as it might seem when considering the full scope of life. The real test of any ideology’s merit comes with time, particularly when the next generation is raised under these values. By then, the damage from these superficial and self-serving philosophies will already have taken root, leaving their consequences to echo for years to come.

We present what the "red pill" movement should focus on in our blog post, "What it means to be a man"